Business Insider wrote “US income inequality jumps to highest level ever recorded” and quoted a professor saying, “Wages remain low, there is a lack of childcare for single-parent families, and so on.”

How did they say inequality grew when Brown said it didn’t? Because the 5-year Gini covering 2014 to 2018 was higher than the five-year Gini covering 2013-2017, Brown wrote. “The increase happened from 2016 to 2017, so it’s old news today,” Brown wrote. Others said the year-to-year increased, but they used a figure for 2017 that had to be revised because the methodology for computing the Gini changed.

Brown wrote that the rich realize gains in their personal pocketbooks from good economic times quicker than the rest of us because they quickly benefit from better investment returns and salaries and bonuses that are sensitive to economic conditions. Benefits for the bottom 80 percent are seen in more jobs and higher wages after about a year lag, but they last longer – usually about three years – Brown wrote.

But the real story, he wrote, was how the media used one distorted number to make negative claims about the economy when it is in fact booming.

“It’s hard to imagine a better Census report whether your main concern is overall economic growth or how the poor and middle class are doing relative to the upper-middle class and rich,” he concluded. “If these are the headlines for this kind of report, imagine what we’ll see when the economic news is only average, or grim.”

Brian McNicoll

Brian McNicoll is Editor of Accuracy in Media. He is a former newspaper editor, think tank writer and Capitol Hill staffer, is a conservative writer and editor in Reston, Va.